Highway To Hell — Courtney Leonie

Project Snapshot

Docks is the finale level in Left4Dead campaign called Highway To Hell. Survivors travel through a forest and reach a boathouse where the players fend off waves of undead until a rescue boat arrives.

Engine: Source (Hammer Editor)

Base Game: Left4Dead

Campaign Document Overview

PAK File

Level Overview

The Docks is the final level in the campaign Highway To Hell for Left4Dead. They travel through a forest to reach the docks so they can call for help. They must defend the boathouse from waves of undead until the boat arrives and they can escape.

Responsibilities

Design, Iterate and Build the 4th level which included the finale event.
Compile, maintain and document the LDD for the campaign. Each member did their own maps and then I compiled the document.
Playtesting the VPK for bugs and errors in gameplay

Retrospective

What Went Well

Space accommodated combat well - zombies were not predictable and combat was challenging.
Space feels like an exterior mountain/forest type space.
The conveyance of the critical path was clear and easily readable to players.
Clever clipping made generation of nav-mesh quick and easy.

What Went Wrong

Displacement - some displacement has seams and is very angular.
Campaign Specifics - Rotation of levels caused the level to move off-grid which caused some floating-point seams.
Introduction of Enemies - Left4Dead’s director controlling the combat made it difficult to introduce enemies at specific timing without disrupting the level flow.

Even Better If’s

Organize level norms with the rest of the campaign levels so no level needs to be rotated.
Ensure the level is always on-grid to avoid light leaks and other floating-point errors.
Optimize where ever possible to avoid long compile times.
Familiarize yourself with the engine tools before designing to avoid designing something that the engine isn’t built for.

Design Goals

Organic Exterior

Organic Exterior - I wanted to experiment with doing an exterior map in Source for the first time and achieve more experience with exterior map design.
Balanced Defense Area - For the finale defense area, the players must have a balanced environment to defend where zombies are able to push the players and avoid being too predictable. This meant having a decent number of entry routes for the zombies.
Verticality - I wanted players to be able to fight in a number of different elevations. The player has an opportunity to fight zombies that come from above and below.

Maps and Layouts

The Docks is comprised of two buildings, the boathouse and the ranger cabin. The level also contains forest and a small river. Maps and in-game screenshots of each area can be found below.

The initial design was done on paper, then build out in Hammer and iterated on, and then brought to the final polish stage.

Final design labelled map with dimensions.

Mountain Path and Ranger Cabin

My primary goal with the mountain path was wanting the player to see the final boathouse from the beginning and working their way down to it.

A problem I encountered when implementing involved visleafs. When the sightlines from the start to the end were too long, the game struggled to compile all the visleafs.

My solution to this was using the skybox to cut out unnecessary visleafs while still preserving the descending feeling of the level.

Mountain Path from start to ranger cabin

Mountain Path from ranger cabin to boathouse

Boathouse Finale

My main goal with the boathouse finale was having an arena that players could cooperatively defend and still feel threatened.

I needed to have a lot of approach routes that kept players engaged in the defense. This meant that I didn’t allow them to defend against all the zombies by staying in a single place.

My solution to the problem of players defending in a single area was making sure that zombies had routes to approach the players from the front, back and sides.

Boathouse - Zombie Approach Routes, Front View

Boathouse - Zombie Approach Routes, Back View